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Nihon Keizai Shimbun Inc. (Nikkei) covered the 2006 World Cup soccer tournament from a variety of angles by creating an 11-member team including seven reporters from Tokyo, five of whom were sportswriters specializing in soccer, as well as cameramen and staff from local bureaus in Germany. Nikkei also made full use of its network of overseas bureaus.
The reports were distributed through the Nikkei group's broad media network, including its flagship newspaper The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the English-language newspaper The Nikkei Weekly, the Japanese-language Nikkei Net Web site (www.nikkei.co.jp), the English-language Nikkei Net Interactive Web site (www.nni.nikkei.co.jp), and the Nikkei Money & Market information service for mobile phones. Nikkei also distributed its reports through its affiliate television station Nikkei CNBC, its affiliate wire service QUICK, and foreign wire services such as Bloomberg and Reuters.
Upon receiving World Cup articles and other content from reporters, the editors consulted with one another before selecting the content best-suited to each publication or medium, taking advantage of the group's efficient content-distribution system.
More than ever, the group is keenly aware of the increasing use of the Internet and mobile phones as tools for accessing news. This was reflected in the way we distributed virtually the same content via mobile phones as through our Web sites; provided Webcasts of articles by Nikkei sportswriters and outside columnists carried in newspapers; and ran online reports from overseas bureaus covering the national teams of their respective countries.
Nikkei Net, one of the most popular Web sites operated by a newspaper company or TV station in Japan, created special pages for the 2006 World Cup throughout the tournament period.
As an official media supporter appointed by the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) for the 2006 World Cup, Nikkei organized through its Advertising Bureau a World Cup symposium in Japan just before the tournament began. The content of the speeches and discussions was featured in The Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
In this way, we believe the Nikkei group played a key role in stirring popular interest in the World Cup, while the event helped the group increase advertising revenue by about 1.4 billion yen (about 9.56 million euros) and expand readership. |